The Resistance Begins

They didn’t have to burn down the Reichstag , er, the US Senate Building, to get their way. All they had to do was change the rules and we have the same result: an authoritarian, fascistic government run by a dedicated megalomaniac. There is only one answer to this coup and Don Rose, amongst others, recommends RESISTANCE. There is no easy way out of this mess that both parties contributed to. There will be resistance and there will be violent push back by the coup. Let us hope our country does not devolve into chaos and with no peaceful way back to our beloved democracy. – b. traven

As we entered the era of “alternative facts,” “extreme vetting,” “taking names,” incipient trade wars and trying to shut up the press, The Resistance got off to a flying start. First off, 3.5 million or more Americans in Washington DC , around the country and around the world put their bodies on the line in women-led protest marches. The largest such mobilization in American history.

Demonstrations continued against Trump’s cabinet choices and executive orders on abortion, immigration, the environment and others–many of which are flawed, possibly unconstitutional or require congressional action. Spontaneous airport demonstrations and a lawsuit temporarily blocked Trump’s onerous refugee ban.

On another front, some of the nation’s most brilliant constitutional lawyers and governmental ethicists filed a lawsuit charging that many of Trump’s businesses violate the “emoluments clause” of the US Constitution, which forbids a president from accepting gifts or financial favors from foreign powers. If the plaintiffs get standing, a summons for Trump could be issued and his tax returns, among other documents, could be released as part of the discovery process.

But this is only the start. The Resistance must open more fronts, continuing demonstrations and lawsuits, but move quickly from mobilizing to political organizing. Demonstrations, even as massive as the women’s marches–whose organizers and participants should be lauded–will go only so far. I’ve been involved in many during the past half century, but please remember it took dozens of massive demonstrations over nearly 10 years and two presidencies before we finally ended the Vietnam War.

Remember, too, that while The Resistance represents the numerical majority of voters, due to Democratic concentration in cities and coastal areas, Trump’s side has a firm grip on Congress, the presidency and soon the US Supreme Court–plus an overwhelming majority of governorships and state legislatures. If the latter are permitted to remain by2020, a gerrymandered House of Representatives will be locked in for another decade.

The Resistance must develop into a kind of progressive Tea Party, aiming immediately at the 2018 mid-term elections. Use social media to call out each and every lie the administration floats and focus on Trump’s impossible-to-fulfill promises of creating or “bringing back” jobs in Michigan, Wisconsin or Pennsylvania. There should be a special effort to work with union leaders whose members were conned by some of those false promises.

Progressives in solid blue areas have to reach out to friends and acquaintances in red districts to help them organize locally. As many have pointed out, congresspersons don’t care what you have to say unless you are a constituent. Even in blue states such as Illinois, there are red congressional districts to focus on. Chicagoans, for example, own vacation homes in neighboring Michigan, Indiana and Wisconsin. Work with locals there.

Most importantly, The Resistance must develop a clear, workable , forward-looking economic message well beyond the term-paper meanderings of the Clinton campaign, but avoiding some of the less credible, over-promising aspects of the Sanders effort.

If the chaos of Trump’s 10 days continues, the administration could collapse of its own weight. But The Resistance can’t count on that. Organize!

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12 thoughts on “The Resistance Begins”

I certainly don’t argue with the need for resistance! However, I’m afraid I can’t swallow the claim that “a majority” of our fellow citizens are with us. And that is the tragedy. I also think that the image of colonists dumping crates of tea leaves into Boston Harbor has been permanently sullied by the “real” Tea Party. Please, let us not speak in terms at all calling that gang of yahoos (see original usage by J. Swift) to mind!!

Adding to my comment of Feb. 2: current opinion polls (yeah, yeah, “for what it’s worth”!) basically indicate a tie between supporters and opponents of the Muslim Ban. You know, the ban that one day really is a ban, the next day simply “very, very extreme vetting” of would-be immigrants. “Very, very extreme.” Donald J. Trump really knows how to exquisitely craft a winning phrase, huh? This basically even split in opinion should not be surprising, given 1.) the outcome of the actual election back in November; and 2.) the depiction of folks from “the Middle East” as evil, fiendish cardboard villains in “popular culture.” I have never subjected my eyeballs to TV shows like “24” but that’s my understanding of their gist. I won’t lower myself to even study them as a “sociological phenomenon.” Hell, I’m a college dropout! I’ll leave such a task to the PhDs!

Support the Green Party lawsuit in Pennsylvania to hold the state accountable for voter suppression and vote tampering by having voting machines that do not work. This will help hold other states and government agencies accountable for having a voting system that works and that every vote is counted.

All we need are fair and honest elections. Without them, Trump is only the beginning. Expose and abolish Interstate Crosscheck, voter purging, gerrymandering, hackable voting machines, and other voter suppression tactics that caused this crisis.

Per CNN, the Prime Minister of Romania has voided anti-corruption laws (as relates to government, one must suspect). Now, who, recently arrived on the world stage, could possibly have “inspired” that bit of legal skullduggery?!? Hmmmm.

“Resistance”? Oh, you must mean those Democrats who campaigned for election to Congress in 2006 and who won a sweeping victory based on their promises to shut down Deputy Dubya’s dubious debacle in Iraq. You know, resistance led by new House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, otherwise known as:

Nancy the Negotiator

Nancy the Negotiator
Gives up first; surrenders later;
Takes her cards from off the table,
Then recites her loser fable:

“We don’t have the votes we need,”
Nancy says, in tones that bleed:
“Mean Republicans will whine
If we do not toe their line.”

Nancy bows to George and Dick
While her skinny ass they kick;
Writes them checks both blank and rubber,
Then proceeds to lamely blubber:

“We don’t like what Dubya’s doing.
Still, we quite enjoy the screwing.
Masochism’s what we offer,
Helping crooks to loot the coffer”

“Sure, the squandered blood and treasure
Goes to those we will not measure.
Still, we promise you’ll adore us
If you mark your ballot for us.”

“Choices you don’t have assail you,
Leaving only us who fail you.
Nonetheless, we’ve gotten fatter.
Why, then, should we think you matter?”

Well, OK. Not that wet-noodle resistance, because Republicans still held the presidency, don’t you know. But with a Democrat elected to the presidency in 2008, one who claimed to have “opposed” Dick and Dubya’s disaster in Iraq, the “resistance” truly came into its own. You know, President Barack “half-ass in everything” Obama, otherwise known as the very epitome of:

Congenital Stockholm Syndrome

He started by giving up quickly,
Surrendering early his case.
He offered to kiss their asses.
Replying, they pissed in his face.

Their urine, he thought, tasted strangely;
Yet not at all bad to his taste.
He’d gotten so used to it, plainly.
Why let such a drink go to waste?

The people who voted in favor
Of him and his promise of “change”
Now see in his many betrayals
A poodle afflicted with mange.

Each time that the surly and crazy
Republicans out for his skin
Condemn him for living and breathing,
He graciously helps them to win.

He’ll turn on his base in an instant
With threats and disdain and neglect
While bombing some Muslims so Cheney
Might thrill to the lives that he’s wrecked.

A black man in love with apartheid
He offers his stalwart support
To Zionists and their extortion
With “More, please!” his only retort.

A masochist begging for beatings
Obama takes joy in abuse
Receiving just what he has asked for
Which makes him of no earthly use

The little brown men that he’s murdered
In homes far away from our land
Bring profits obscene to his backers
Who give him the back of their hand.

Obama seeks praise from the vicious
Republicans, no matter what.
He suffers, apparently, nothing
So much as his need to kiss butt.

Michael Murry, “The Misfortune Teller,” Copyright 2011

So now the official “resistance” apparently consists of “Democrats” in Congress and a few state governorships so powerless that, as BS Newshour commenter Mark Shields charitably puts it: “They couldn’t pass the salt.”

So now we’ve got some earnest ladies marching in a few cities with cute signs and clever slogans blaming Russian President Vladimir Putin for You-Know-Her’s stupendously inept campaign defeat at the hands of a complete buffoon and political rookie, Donald Trump. If this constitutes the “resistance,” then it looks like the Wall-Street/Permanent-War Republicans have very little to fear, especially not from their Democratic Wall-Street/Permanent-War “opposition.”

Spot on Michael ! Good to see your comments. The old crew, Pelosi, Hoyer, Biden, et al certainly don’t want to “resist”. The key event will be if Ellison makes it as DNC head rather than the Clinton’s pick, Perez. Sanders has been unusually quiet in the last month considering that the Trump brigands have put forward a crew of wreckers whose clear aim is to destroy our rule of law and our republic.
If Ellison doesn’t make it I predict that a real Resistance movement will arise and front a formidable third party. Our country is clearly headed for a very dark period but their is clear evidence that real “resistance to fascism is out there waiting to coalesce, ( and not connected to the failed Democratic Party)
It is also clear that Trump, has learned from Reagan, Clinton, the bushes, and Obama that the way to let the American public admire them is to start a war. Look out Iran!

As I’ve been saying, the Dems demonstrated their irrelevance by their choice of candidate for the 2016 Presidential election. So now the nation is “blessed,” thanks to the tie-breaking vote of VP Pence, with an “Education Secretary” dedicated to hamstringing and ultimately decimating the public education system. Can things get any more “curiouser,” as Lewis Carroll might inquire? The hearings on SCOTUS nominee Gorsuch should be interesting, but if a simple majority vote is all that’s needed in Senate to approve him he’s a shoe-in. (“Shoo-in”? Hmm, I’ve never written that phrase before!) And unfortunately, with our system, if the Dems regain some seats next year it won’t enable undoing this appointment. Appointment-for-life. Yeah, this system needs a major rethink!

I’m all for “resistance”, but while we’re at it, would like to offer the following perspectives:

“[The Obama Admiristration was] responsible for war crimes in Libya, Ukraine and Syria among many other atrocities resulting in the deaths of over four hundred thousand people, as many or more maimed, millions of refugees, entire cities destroyed along with many antiquities. These war crimes were committed by actual neo-Nazis in Ukraine, and by fascist terrorist groups in Syria, funded and armed by the Obama gang and the Republican neocons, through its allies like Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and Turkey. But the protestors carry signs that say “Stop Fascism!” only now that Trump is elected.
I’m not arguing that it’s unfair or wrong to protest Trump but want to make the deeper point that some people recognize this as the result of social engineering and media-based mind control. The obvious question is: how is it possible that all of the Obama gang’s war crimes were never called fascistic and never massively protested?”

“It is interesting how the lives of Yemenis suddenly matter, referring to the US military botched raid late last month against an alleged al-Qaeda stronghold in that country, killing mostly civilians…
The hypocrisy of it all should be obvious, but some insist on ignoring it…Party tribalism and gender politics aside, Trump is a mere extension and a natural progression of previous US administrations’ agendas that launched avoidable, unjust wars, embedded fear, fanned the flames of Islamophobia, hate for immigrants, etc.
There is hardly a single bad deed that Trump has carried – or intends to carry out – that does not have roots in another policy championed by previous administrations.”

In furtherance of Mr. Herr’s comments, it is said that on Obama’s watch a record number of undocumented immigrants was deported. So today’s apparent “downpayment” [CNN headline, 11 Feb. 2017: “Hundreds Arrested in ICE Raids”] on Trump’s threats to immigrants is thus far a drop in the bucket. The Obama administration is also viewed as the most secretive in history–there was even an article about the portable “cone of silence” that accompanied him on travels, erected around him when he made “sensitive” cellphone calls. He also continued the Cheney/Bush policy of assassination by drone and blanket surveillance of electronic communications. Can we deem this “fascism”? It undoubtedly represented the continuing evolution of the National Security State, to the detriment of our last remaining civil liberties as US citizens. But Obama never employed xenophobic, racist rhetoric in public speeches. Trump’s employment of such language–which neither Mussolini nor Hitler/Goebbels would have disdained as feeble–I have labeled (back during the campaign) “classic fascist rhetoric,” giving the concept of “populism” a very black eye. I stand by that designation. If we can’t deem Trump a fascist, what kind of monstrosity must be foisted on us to get us to use that term?

Your reply is very much on the mark…I agree with what you say and appreciate your manner of speaking. Excellent point about “classic fascist rhetoric”. I just think it’s important to not lose sight of the creeping fascism prior to Trump and wish all this “resistance” had been embarked upon years ago.